Recycling system for printed wiring boards with mounted parts

A practical recycling system has been developed for printed wiring boards (PWBs) with electronic parts mounted on them. This system consists of part-removing, solder-removing and resin-board pulverizing/separating processes, and is effective in the recovery of useful materials. The authors have developed a part-removal apparatus which successfully removes through-hole devices as well as surface mounted devices from PWBs with almost no damage to the devices themselves. Most of the solder is removed by the part-removal, and later by surface abrasion followed by heat/impact. After the removal of parts and solder, the resin-boards are pulverized and the resulting powder is then separated into two types: a copper-rich powder and a powder which consists of glass fiber and resin (GR powder). The copper-rich powder is a good copper resource for refining; the GR powder is usable as a filler for polymer products. Recovered parts which contains valuable metal resources (including gold), can be refined out, as is most commonly the case in other recycling systems, but a more economic and ecologically sound approach would be to exploit the potential of parts removed in this system to be reused for their original purposes after being checked for reliability.